Speed Test your Internet

The closer you are to the modem the better your signal will be! WiFi signal get weaker the further away you are from the modem. Even the amount of walls and the material of those walls between the modem and where you sit can impact your connection.

Those that have bigger houses may find that where they have situated the modem it may not reach some rooms upstairs or near the back of the house. If you experience issues with reach you can either try moving the modem to a different spot to see if the service improves or you can purchase an extender so that the signal can be boosted.

Running multiple tests allows you to gather more information and provide you with a more accurate average speed. Measuring New Zealand Broadband’s peak time is between 7 pm - 11 pm Monday to Friday, so those are great times to test for the most accurate results.

It’s a good idea to restart your device prior to running a speed test so that anything that is running in the background will be stopped. Things running in the background can skew the results due to other programs or tabs slowing the system down.

We recommend using an ethernet cable for testing internet speeds as Ethernet will almost always be faster than any internet over WiFi. If you do not have an ethernet cable or a device that supports an ethernet cable you can still run the speed test but please be aware that the speed results will likely not be as fast as if you were to test through the ethernet line.

There are a bunch of factors that can impact your broadband speed.

Factors that impact all connections:

• Your wireless signal quality and strength
• Where your modem is located in your home. It should be in an open space and away from other electronic devices that can cause interference, such as microwaves or fridges.
• The frequency you're connecting to 2.4GHz or 5GHz. At 5 GHz, your data speed is fast, but the range is limited and the wireless signal may not penetrate through walls. If you connect through the 2.4GHz frequency, your data range is further but the data travel speeds are slower than 5GHz.
• If you're using a wired connection, speed can be affected by the category of the ethernet cable you're using; for example, CAT6 is faster than CAT5
• The age of your modem and the technology it supports
• The age of the device (such as your laptop or phone) you're using and the technology it supports.
• Your connection speeds can also be limited by the other parties you're connecting to, for example, the person you're video calling or the website you're connecting to could be the issue.

Factors that impact ADSL or VDSL (copper) connections:

• The distance from your connection to the copper exchange
• The quality of the copper cable
• Your internal wiring
• The number of jack points you have in your home